A STUDY ON CURRENT APPLICATION AND USER-DRIVEN NEED ANALYSIS OF MATERIAL MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES IN GENERAL STORE OF A MULTI-SPECIALITY HOSPITAL Babli Kumari, Avinash Tirumalai,Manvendra, Suresh Shanmugasundaram Botho University Botswana Babli.kumari@bothouniversity.ac.bw ABSTRACT To generate a statistically significant difference in terms of ITR after ABC & SFN analysis in the General Store section of GNRC Hospitals Pvt. Ltd. The core experiment under the study had a sample size of 660 types of consumable items. The study was done by observing the difference in Inventory Turnover Rate (ITR) of the existing system of Inventory control and then carrying out ABC & FSN analysis by classifying the inventory of last 4 months. It was found that the implementation of ABC & FSN analysis was successful in the study setting in terms of increased turnover of items. The average ITR of the sample was 1.34. Then the ABC & FSN (FSN classification was already existing in some extent) classification of the working sample was carried out and for 20 days, the standard control guidelines for A, B and C categories were followed. Thereafter the same sample measurements were retaken i.e. the ITR s were calculated after implementation and this time average was seen to be 1.71. There was an increase in ITR s before and after implementation of ABC & FSN analysis. The increment percentage was tested for its statistical significance through paired t-test and SPSS software package was used to generate the results along with the sought significance. An induced survey was carried out among the employees in the hospital which was aimed at increasing the acceptance level of the management change after adoption of the new analysis techniques of inventory control. KEY WORDS Material/inventory Management Technique, Efficiency, Effectiveness, Health Service, Inventory Turnover Rate. 1. Introduction Aim of the material management in the hospital is to ensure adequate stock required for continuous supply and at the same time not to have too much also to ensure that resources available are most effectively and efficiently used.Material management [1] as a function is responsiable for coordinating, Planning, sourcing, purchasing and controlling in such way as to achive effiency and to provide services to the consumers at minium price. Inventory is the most important function of the material management. It is practically impossible for maintaing zero time lags. Theoretically it may seem to meet the day to day requirements of demand then inventory can be avoided, but which is not the case. Inventroy acts as a cusion in case supply fails to meet day to day demand. The study is aimed at optimizing the uses of modern material management techniques and tools and thereby reducing materials cost per patient day incurred in a hospital. The study is important to minimize idle time by avoiding stock out & storage of essential items and to optimize financial investments. It avoids obsolescence and thereby improves the quality of patient care operations in hospital.[10] 2. Materials and Methods 2.1 Experimental Study A hospital-based Experimental study was carried out in general store section of GNRC Hospitals Pvt Ltd, Dispur, Guwahati. It is a 314 bedded multi-specialty hospital. It is an ISO 9001 certified organization. Institute of Neurological Science & GNRC Heart Institute are accredit from the following organization State governments of Arunchal Pradesh, Assam, Sikkim, Meghalaya, Manipur and Tripur. The study was aimed at generating a difference in terms of increased ITR[4] in the sample after ABC & FSN methods implementation. The yield difference was tested for significance to conclude that the intervention of implemented methods were useful. . 3. Sampling and Sample Sizing Sampling method was Stratified Random Sampling (SRS). The stratification was based on Average Consumption Rate [4] of the items as per the previous 4 months’ record. Number of stratum was 3. Formula used for Sample Size Calculation: n= 2[(Zα+ Zβ)2× σ2 / d2] Where, n= sample size, Zα = value at specified CI, Zβ= value at specified power, σ=pooled SD of the observations, d=degrees of certainty. Here, At 95% CI, Proceedings of the Fourth IASTED International Conference September 5 - 7, 2016 Gaborone, Botswana Health Informatics (AfricaHI 2016) DOI: 10.2316/P.2016.837-001 159